Android 4.3 ported to x86, runs on desktop, laptop computers

Google’s Android operating system may designed for low-power devices with touchscreens including smartphones and tablets. But that doesn’t mean you can’t run it on a laptop or desktop computer.

While Android has officially supported Intel’s low-power smartphone chips for a while, there’s also an unofficial Android-x86 project which ports Google’s mobile operating system to run on standard PC hardware.

When Google released Android 4.3 last week, the team wasted no time getting it up and running on x86 hardware. A test build of Android 4.3 for x86 is already available.

The test build is based on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean source, and features a 3.10.2 kernel and support for hardware-accelerated graphics on devices with AMD Radeon and Intel graphics chipsets.

This is still a test build and not everything works. Suspend and resume aren’t yet supported, and there’s no Superuser (root) access. Most other features seem to work.

You can take a test build for a spin by downloading a liveCD image from the Android-x86 page. Or just check out this video of the software running on a Acer Aspire 522 mini-laptop with an AMD C-50 processor.

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I might try it out but the way they group the builds into different classes of machines makes me doubt whether it will run on my FoxConn AMD-350 desktop or even to know which build to try.

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it is one build. and it should support the e-350[bobcat cores], wifi,audio,bt and storage might be the trouble spots.

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Maybe my terminology is wrong, but why are there different ISOs available for download here:

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those are older, 4.2 and 4.3 are uni-build[?] works on multiple machines.

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C50 is AMD’s APU that was being put inside various netbooks and tablets in 2011 and those tablets had Windows 7. Tablets powered with AMD’s C50 were the most powerful tablets in 2011, now imagine the performance of A4 1200 Temash in 3.9 TDP package 😀

Way way faster GPU and better CPU performance, just imagine an tablet with A6 1450 Temash running Android… It will check and spit out anything you throw at it.

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if you think that the performance looks decent in the video, I just have to mention that this is using the amd opensource drivers which are ~50% the performance of the closed source catalyst driver. Then if we look at the a4-1200 with half the power consumption with slightly higher performance, then amd does have a great product…they just need to hurry and support android!!

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AMD has stated they will provide support for Android but haven’t given a ETA on when to expect it… Hopefully, it won’t take them too long but brings into question whether they’ll start making custom SoCs just for doing that…

Since that’s what Intel did with their ATOM SoCs that run Android, specifically running a hardware binary translation layer to help ease compatibility issues with Android apps that are optimized for ARM hardware.

Or whether they’ll go with a custom ROM with emulation solution, as otherwise just running Android won’t mean all the apps will work.

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Another team already ported it several years ago, I used it on an EeePC701 at least 2 years ago.

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Good to see the Android x86 project is coming along well. I can’t wait to see Intel Silvermont based Atom phones running Android to come out.

Of course, I wouldn’t bother running Android on any x86 notebook beyond playing around. I’d rather use a desktop OS like Windows or OpenSUSE on a notebook.

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It’s a lot easier now that Google officially supports x86 for Android.

Intel also adds a binary translation layer for the version of ATOMs that go into phones, namely Medfield and Clover Trail+… While Merrifield will be the 22nm Silvermont update but that won’t be out till early next year…

While there are other projects, don’t know if they’re using BlueStack, but there have been demonstrations of upcoming systems that can run Android apps in Windows 8 and switch to a Android environment without rebooting.

So, we may see some merging on certain systems with multiple OS or at least the ability to run apps from multiple OS…

For Linux users, Bay Trail support for 64bit helps because the Linux Boot Loader that works with UEFI and Secure Boot only works with 64bit systems.

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The Android environment switching one is a netbook that has a dedicated ARM ecosystem within the computer, and from what I believe, either Android or Windows runs on top of another. I state this fact for the only product that I know that has this kind of dual OS functionality.

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No, the demonstrations had no secondary processor. It was purely a software solution… Besides, the ARM switching ones can’t run apps within Windows but this demonstration did!

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There are also virtualization solutions like on one Samsung notebook (virtualizes the entire Android OS) and Bluestacks (virtualizes the runtime environment in order run Andriod apps).

Anyway, I wouldn’t run a virtualized Android OS on a notebook anyway. I may run Android on a notebook if it ran on a separte low power ARM or Atom chip like you mentioned solely for the battery life improvement. Although, Windows 8 has come pretty far in improving battery life especially for the recent Intel chips.

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Why the hell would you care about having an Intel chip in your phone when ARM alternatives are better? It’s not like you “need” an x86 chip like for Windows. If anything the x86 will break some app compatibility or be slower than it should be with ARM emulation.

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Would using android on a laptop save battery life? I believe its pretty lightweight compared to windows so my theory is that the battery will last and the computer can run without annoying crazy fans. Anyone agree? Disagree?

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AGREE! windows was never built with efficiency in mind, it has been and always will be a resource hog, it needs tons of ram, that consumes power, it uses way more processor, that consumes power, etc. Essentially to run a windows phone, tablet, laptop, even desktop, you need to also pay for those upgraded specs just to run windows normally on it (i.e. the surface pro 2 is over $1,000, and in truth you can get a far better spec’d ulta book for way less, or a tablet even with a real quad core not a dual core with hyperthreading). Your battery will definately last longer with android, but also any linux usually. Also, you will have far more memory and processor power to run applications you need then you would with windows. And all applications you would need for buisness, school, work are already in linuxes, the only place… Read more »

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I’m not clear where the software is coming from. Which apps are then able to run on an x86 android platform?

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i tested the android x86 version of android 4.3 and i have root access and play store access

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